Assembly 2021

Voice Shopping: Impersonation as Liberation

Thursday June 10, 5pm PST
Becca Kauffman

A performer and their microphone.

Adopting a different way of speaking, or talking like somebody else, can have a naturally freeing quality: we temporarily free ourselves, from ourselves. In this participatory workshop, we experiment with impersonation as a way of cultivating our vocal awareness.

Part group lesson, part performance, we will use the voice as a reference point for understanding the aesthetics of relational space. Grounding in vocal technique, we’ll focus on the malleability of our expression, imitation as a form of deep listening, and circumstance as a determining factor in how we communicate. 

Come try on another voice for size, and see how it can both destabilize and assert your very own identity.

This is a microphone.

Becca Kauffman is a New York-based performance artist with an interactive, genre-fluid approach to their multidisciplinary solo work. Their uniquely self-guided career through art, music, theater, comedy, voice acting, DJing, and dance began converging into the persona-driven art project, Jennifer Vanilla, in 2015, and continues to this day in the form of a forthcoming music album, out in 2022. 

Becca was a member of the experimental Brooklyn pop band Ava Luna for ten years, and is now a first year MFA candidate in Art and Social Practice at Portland State University, where they are working to incorporate socially engaged art strategies into their performance work.

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